Searching For A Save Point (Continued...): "Music Nerd" (Evolving Portals) OBS SCREEN RECORDING PREVIEW

Revisiting the still unreleased Music Nerd (Evolving Portals) album to finalize for the USB.

I'll copy & paste the original description / backstory minted on Zora in 2023 Below First, Then will continue with currant progress notes after:

Backstory:

I originally asked cxy what his favorite songs were last year so I could flip them.. but instead of just making easily digestible normal beats I went further and further down the rabbit hole and rode the flow state express into the most obscure, break sh*t on purpose, experimental Jazz spirit and Evolved Portals every time I opened up the session…. I later asked C.Y. If he had any recordings of him having convos because the way he thinks and speaks about music resonates so hard with my “The Process itself is way cooler than the shiny finish product” and he sent me a podcast. What a gold mine of cherished words. I almost feel bad attaching them to me just nerding out and getting weird with music and recording the entire process live. It’s such a frustrating reality knowing we let technology re-program us so systematically to have the smallest attention spans and be self aware that only 2% (if that) will actually digest a 10 minute video fully…. 130 minutes hahah. I’m so bored with creating and consuming conventional, short form music & videos. Even if it’s objectively dope…. I’ve consumed so much dope music in my lifetime…. And made so much conventional music. That I need to hear and make stuff that draws outside of lines and catches me off guard to fire off those neurons or I get bored quickly…. Taking the concept of music nerd so far, kids will be on a space station in the future geeking out and sampling my madness. There’s quite literally no one else that does what I do at the level I do or in the excess I do…. There’s no market for it, no trophies, and no attention spans. I've done conventional for years. Art is boundless, Theory is human made. Music is an expression that's so subjective. Why did we allow so much time to pass all following these conventional rules? Intro, verse, chorus, verse, bridge outro. Mixing, Mastering, Track Length, Genre, Single, EP, Album. Sound is cosmic... There are no rules. Just express, transmute and document.

Trying to create a starter pack for a 3 decade career seems challenging. Overwhelming amount of history, context and a vast discography. Evolution.

So let's start closer to the present. The consistent artist bored w/ boxes, rebelling against the meta & nerding out having fun creating in the flow state and documenting that real time process, mistakes and all.

Love to cxy.eth for entering my life when he did and showing me I wasn't alone in valuing the process more than the final shiney, polished result.

If there is only one thing I can leave behind to define who Dutch is it's this.

"Peace Peace, My name is Dutch and I am a lifelong living example of a Music Nerd. Music is the healer. Tiny Ripples"

#EvolvingPortals

Ok, back to the present....

Chapter I

So, The reason this specific project was never released, despite me revisiting & spending days at a time on it is a multi-tiered roadblock.

1st of all, to simplify the abstract - when I label something #EVOLVINGPORTALS it's not a very transparent genre name but the label is simple.

Anything with this label are just long form, real time re-samples (Resample meaning a single source capturing the output of the master audio channel) No separate stems, no dry version...

The original intent of this method was to fully capture the entire process from beginning to end to preserve all the magic in trial and error that doesn't make it to finalized polished public releases.

Chapter II

How the original intent evolved due to a workaround.

So, Ableton Live has the ability to re-sample directly in the DAW, you can choose to route specific tracks/channels/dry or with effect/or master which captures all processing... (which is how I export all my master tracks, in real time apposed to using the arrangement view captured in this screen recording) This has always been good for both prepping samples before importing into the sampler instrument to microchop, and also good for capturing master bounces in real time.....

But there was a fatal flaw using resample in ableton for the purpose of capturing the entire session from start to end in real time.... and that is, play and stop, will stop the resample also, there's no way to set up a track that isn't effected by global actions to get around this, So my workaround was routing the master audio out of my audio interface into analog hardware to capture audio, I went with the familiar SP404sx at the time, which does the job.....but here is the 2nd roadblock.

The SP404 captures audio in 16BT.

This by itself isn't the problem, but it in fact the very nature of EVOLVING PORTALS and what that means... The file being recording is starting dry, but audio fx, compression, limiters are being added to tracks in realtime, and most problematic they are being added to the master track/chain as this is just how most of us mix and master over time....

What does that mean for not technical enjoyers of music?

To dumb it down, the volume is all over the place, very quiet to max loudness, to quiet.... All things that usually can be solved with wizardry after the fact.

Back to technical..... CD Quality - 16BT Streaming - 24BT IN DAW / MASTER - 32BT FLOAT.

Capturing Audio in 32bt Float, allows you to return to that audio file, in a non destructive way...

real world example: you are recording your voice for a video dry, but there are words or parts that are too loud that they peak/clip above the 0db limit..... Makes sense right? if not fixed before finalizing the audio / video will either produce a very loud digital pop at those moments it peaks, or distort, or sometimes even just completely duck the volume. (leave a comment with the timecode in which you hear these digital pops in this video)

32BT FLOAT, lets you edit that audio file / wav, and lower the gain / volume in the places it peaks like they never happened.

In contrast, working with 16bt/24bt/32bt (non float) that audio is completely baked in, anything clipping above 0DB cannot be reduced in a way it is not unnatural or unpleasant to the ear, when you add the extra roadblock of working with audio that already has mastering applied, there is no path to improve quality left, all additional editing it degradation, which can be worked around in conventual length songs.

But Evolving Portals is not conventual, because the original purpose didn't even remain just capturing (outtakes or jamsession) audio logs, and then still releasing the polished short conventual track...

It evolved into me, leaning into the real time capture aspect, and instead of a goal of final track, I was obsessed with challenging myself, and purposely breaking things and experimenting and then trying to solve these problems in real time, literally riding the high of autopilot and great unknown.... It's beyond being present... it feels like the truest connection to source....

Some projects are easier than others, but as you can see, I went dummy mode in my pivots and experimentation, it's much audio and the volume and mastering was not as consistent as usual.

I'm sure even if these weren't real issues, this audio in general likely isn't on the digestible palette menu of what people consider music... I however grew up in the 80's, 90's on video games with the weirdest hypnotizing, repetitive music since the inception of video games.... Then It didn't help I main'd JRPG's.... So my brain and spirit isn't focused on making a beat or a genre... i'm just processing and expressing free form in real time.... that being said, I still want thing to be presented as captured / intended... this is just one of those sessions where it's kinda impossible to achieve.

but it's fun to revisit and try at least for me <3